an old writer and his words

  • INTO THE DESERT

    His is six and deeply confused, and asks questions to end that state. He wants to know if Adam and Eve had two sons, and one killed the other, where did all of the people come from? Ask your father seems and easy answer, but one he cannot accept, too easy for a mind that…

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHT ARRIVES

    When we finally allow night to settle in around us, and we curl together in anticipation of sleep, we fit comfortably, but with no less passion than when we first did this, but a passion tempered by less need for flame, more for warmth and a gentle caress. We could not have anticipated this, and…

    Lou Faber

  • ERATO

    Sit down and be silent, you always want to speak at the worst possible moment, whispering incessantly in my ear when I cannot answer you. When I call on you, you prefer to avoid me, playing off in a corner somewhere sampling the joys of the day to be forgotten by nightfall when I seek…

    Lou Faber

  • RIVERS

    I have never been particularly one for rivers. Like everyone, I’ve walked along their shores, listened to them gurgle under remote bridges but otherwise never paid them much attention. There’s an old Buddhist saying you can’t step into the same river twice, but that presupposes you step into the river the first time. I remember…

    Lou Faber

  • DEMONS

    In the night there are no demons just the sound of your breathing soft, as your touch on my back, your foot against my calf.

    Lou Faber

  • SILENCE

    She only wants to know what lies deep within silence. He says he imagines it is a place he can never visit locked away from humans, whose minds deny the quiet. She says she is willing to continue the search, for even if she cannot find it, she may find something like it, and that…

    Lou Faber

  • PAPAL EDICT

    She said “now what they’ve taken away limbo” sounding a bit depressed, “not that you proceed express to the ferry dock, but that was a snap, all you were carefully taught is suddenly wrong or irrelevant. “It would be like Isaac,” I say, “climbing Mount Moriah with Abraham finding a ram tethered to a waiting…

    Lou Faber

  • RIVERSIDE

    The great bronze kings of the Chosun Dynasty look down from Mount Namsan over the city, valleys of small homes, neatly tiled roofs over ramshackle walls, with small gardens clustered atop amid clothes drying racks and cars careening along narrow streets. The old woman wraps the pink towel around on her scalp like some garish…

    Lou Faber

  • DHARMA

    In Tibet there are more than 80 words to describe states of consciousness, several words to explain the sound of prayer flags rustling in a Himalayan breeze that reaches up to the crest of the peaks that lick at the slowly gathering clouds, all of these words never uttered. There are no words in Tibet…

    Lou Faber

  • LATE NIGHT, RITZ CARLTON, SEOUL

    A seemingly endless stream of young Thai men pour out of room 314 like so many clowns tumbling out of a miniature Volkswagen Beetle in the center ring. They laugh, chattering, lacking only oversized shoes to complete the image. They stand by the elevator in a contagion of giggles. After half an hour they return,…

    Lou Faber